Chapter IV — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Spacious cafe with great views but high prices and average food.

Me and my partner came here on a weekday morning and ordered the steak burger and a side of chips to share.

The Food The burger was around 19 dollars and the chips were an extra 4.50. The steak was a good portion but the meat was chewy. There was a single mushroom and some lettuce on the burger to accompany it. The burger included what appeared to be Smith's chips as a side which went untouched during our meal. Including potato chips just strikes me as lazy cooking. If you are not going to include normal chips consider replacing these with thin fried slices of potato that are prepared fresh (similar to some Korean restaurants). The burger was already quite salty and the chips did not add anything to the meal. Overall the burger was an average, if overpriced, steak burger. Without having tried other meals I cannot comment on the rest of their food. For drinks we had a chai tea that was nice.

Atmosphere The restaurant was large and spacious with a balcony at the back with views of the city. Initially we sat to the side closest to the kitchen which was only divided from it by a bamboo screen. We found the kitchen noise distracting so moved to the other end which was nicer. There was a child's play area at the back of the restaurant which as a young couple I think we would have found annoying had we sat inside, however there was enough room so that there were plenty of other places to sit so this was not an issue. The views and balcony were the best part of our experience here.

Service The service was fine, however it was not very busy at the time we ate. The food came out fast and the staff was polite.

Parking The morning we visited we had a little trouble finding a park nearby and had to walk...

Plenty of other places to choose from, go elsewhere instead. Only rated one star.

Dirty place. The dirty shop front should have rung alarm bells but we accepted the table offered. After being ushered outside claiming all the inside tables were reserved, despite no reservation signs being visible. An old hospitality industry ploy to put people outside on in a window to attract walk ins. Said table was very wobbly. Surely restaurant proprietors/staff check the table stability as normal business practice when they placing them on the footpath……but not here. Cutlery wasn’t washed properly and still had food remnants on them. Unacceptable. Both water glasses were not sparking and one glass had lipstick on it from a previous customer. The water bottle looked as if it had never been cleaned on the outside. Unacceptable.

The food There was a hair in the rice porridge and the food was completely tasteless, not up to Thai standard at all. There were also no Thai condiments on the table, no chilli, no fried garlic, no maggi sauce or soy sauce etc to help add flavour. The black coffee was very bitter, almost undrinkable.

Ordering Rather than order via the waitress you are forced to order by a very impersonal QR code. The process is not the best to navigate. Not good for business either when wait staff cannot build rapport with the customer. Very short sighted.

Staff Showed you to a table, referred you to the QR code, left and returned with water and glasses and then delivered your food later. No check-ins to see how you were going or if everything was alright. You were just ignored, after all they’d already taken your money initially when you ordered via the QR code.

Overall a totally unpleasant...

Walked into this cafe for lunch as they have a good view on the deck. This was the wrong decision made. The staff who led us to our seat failed to serve water at first. The weather is scorching hot today in Brisbane, we saw other tables, as soon as they were seated, cold drinks and glasses brought to the table immediately. After a while sitting in the hot deck without water, I walked inside to ask for water to be served but the rude staff who seated us ask me to do it myself, she shouted at me ' THis is self-service" while others had their water served. How rude she was! We then ordered the Chef special - Singapore chilli crab - which came out to be a soft shell crab with some red onion and chilli flakes around the plate and this was it. This is misleading!!!!, if you don't know what is Singapore Chilli crab taste and look like, please do some research before putting onto the menu. My son ordered the seafood pasta and that proved the worst pasta we ever had. The seafood was not fresh. The sauce actually was not a sauce, it was pasta cooked in a soup with triple the amount of reasonable salt. It was so salty and my son vomited it out! and again the Banana and Mango milkshake tasted and looked like a full cream milkshake. For a lunch that cost us more than $75, it was not joking. This was the worst cafe I ever had. We are always searching for a good cafe in the Paddington area, and I can tell you, you should walk away from this...